Is Your Water Safe?

Water, water, everywhere….but just how safe is it?

Have you been:

• wondering if your water is safe,
• purchasing case loads of bottled water from Costco (or some other retailer) or
• deciding between a faucet mounted filter or an expensive under-the-counter type?

These are questions that I pondered literally for years.  I wish that I’d done what we finally did years ago, but then again, hindsight is 20/20, right?  And we’d made other positive changes for our health along the way.

At some point in the future I will write a post on my top recommendations for a healthy diet.  However, I will say now that at the top of that list, if not the top of list will be –

GET A GOOD SOURCE OF PURIFIED WATER

I really cannot emphasize this enough.

Why is Water Purification So Important?

1.  Our bodies are made up mostly of water and water’s function in our bodies is crucial.

We all learned in school that our bodies are made up primarily of water.  And water’s function in our bodies is critical to good health.

Water transports nutrients and without it, we can’t survive.

2.  The water source available today through taps and wells is much more contaminated than in years past.

The New York Times goes into great detail regarding toxins found in the water of various cities and the issues surrounding the problem of our water just not being up to safety standards.  If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, just glance through it and get an idea of what I am talking about.

It cites the fact that toxins like arsenic, perc (a dry cleaning chemical), uranium, mercury and others have been found in tap water and that there are even 830 chemicals that have been found in total in our water.  According to The Times, many of these are liked to cancer and other diseases, even in small amounts.  And this is all not to mention what might be leaching into your water through copper or PVC pipes in your home .

USA Today outlines how pharmaceuticals are showing up in troubling levels in drinking water across the nation.

Now, when we get our local city water reports, do we see prozac listed on there as something that they are testing for?  Of course not!  That’s the problem.  As you can see clearly in The New York Times article, water testing is antiquated because there are so many more toxins present in water today than in year’s past, that what is regularly tested for just isn’t enough.

To be fair, my city’s water site does have a statement showing that they are concerned about this issue and are performing some testing of our water to monitor levels of PCPPs (Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products).  Kudos to them for being ahead of the curve on this, but truthfully, “90% elimination of a majority of 22 target compounds? is not enough for me.  I want them all out!

3.  We need a lot of water and should drink a lot of it.  All the time.

We also know that we are supposed to drink a good amount of it each and every day.  Water is certainly the item that we consume the most of by volume and by weight.  So it makes sense that we pay the most attention to it, over and above everything else.  In my opinion, it is the most important thing that we must change on our path towards health, with the exception of considering the quality of the air that we breathe.  But of course, short of walking around in a bubble with an air purifier attached to it, once we leave our home, there is little we can do about air quality.

Clean water, on the other hand, we can take with us.

If you know our family, you have seen us toting our water around for a long time.  We have even risked insulting hosts by bringing out bottles of water to the table with us when we are invited over for a meal.

Especially when the alternative is drinking tap water, I don’t mind so much what others might think, because I am trying to do the best for my family within reason, and after reading articles like those cited above, I feel that a little embarrassment is a small price to pay for safety.

Now, if we clean up our water, are we solving all of our problems?  Of course not, but to quote Maria Von Trapp from The Sound of Music, it is “a very good place to start” .

I think that this water problem is just one part of the greater trouble that truly is everywhere in our environment.

We are literally living in a more and more problematic  environment that any generation before has had to face.   And that toxicity is not just in the form of chemicals in our water, or heavy metal preservatives in our vaccines.  It is a multi-faceted problem that we are facing.

In effect it is a perfect storm.

We have toxic water, polluted air, heavy-metal preservatives in immunizations, EMF’s (electromagnetic frequencies) coming at us from our cell phones and fluorescent lights, BPA leaching from our plastics…the list goes on and on.

As I have mentioned in other posts, my son has a form of autism, and I have been dealing with a number of health issues.  I feel that we, as such, need to be extra careful with what we put into our bodies.  I also feel that we are, like others who are dealing with auto-immune disorders. chronic fatigue and the like, are sort of like canaries in a coal mine. We are, by our illnesses and disabilities, warning others that something is amiss.  That there are things that we ought to be paying attention to.  Things that we ought to be cleaning up.

So, what to do about it?

Well, we will tackle the question about what to do about your toxic water in my next post.  Stay tuned.

Like this post?  Interested in other health-oriented information?  You can:

1.  Read my posts on:

Poisoned Strawberries
Arsenic in Chicken
Mercury In Fish
Top 5 Steps to Healthy Eating

2.  Make sure you don’t miss a post by subscribing to my email newsletter or RSS feed.  I’d love to see you around more !